“The Ultimate Fighter: Live” Ratings Under One Million

So, it’s probably safe to say now that Friday night wasn’t the best choice to schedule the revamped Ultimate Fighter to air on its new home at FX.

The ratings for the latest episode of The Ultimate Fighter: Live came in at an all-time series low with an average 947,000 viewers. The figure, first reported by MMAJunkie, marks the first time in the series’ history that ratings have dropped below one million viewers.

As part of their broadcast deal with Fox, The Ultimate Fighter: Live airs weekly on FX, the first time in the show’s fifteen season history that it’s been shown anywhere other than Spike TV. The TUF Live ratings have fallen below expectations (and below the Spike TV average) all season, with the fifth episode setting a series’ record low.

For FX, The Ultimate Fighter was newly formatted to run from edit to air weekly and feature a live fight along with each episode. TUF Live features UFC bantamweight champ Dominick Cruz and Urijah Faber as coaches over teams of lightweight UFC hopefuls.

Check out FightLine’s recap of episode five, which saw Team Faber’s Michael Chiesa push through the emotional turmoil of his father’s recent passing to take a unanimous decision over Jeremy Larsen.